Square One
by SaintAugustana
Summary: The apocalypse has ended. If Mankind's getting a clean slate and a fresh start, why can't the archangels? Post-movie. Original character. Rated M for thematic violence.
1. Square One

**Chapter 1 – **Square One

**Author's Note: **_Legion _wasn't the best flick ever, but I really loved Paul Bettany's portrayal of Michael, the archangel [main character] and thought if only the movie had made him more of a focal point then it might have been at least moderately brilliant. Anyway, brilliance has nothing to do with my decision to fanfictionize that little universe: some things just fit, and twenty minutes after the movie I already had entire storylines written up in my head. The juices are flowing again, for the first time in ages. I just needed some fresh material.

But you will need to see the movie for this to make sense, as it picks up right where the last scene left off.

Again, we have my original character. For lack-of-time's sake, let's fancifully pretend she was a character in the movie all along, just another customer at the diner who got caught up in all the hell and survived, but ended up alone at the end of the movie. **[SPOILER WARNING!] **Michael has just flown off the top of the craggy mountain peak and into the sunrise. Jeep and Charlie are headed to who-knows-where with the baby.

And yeah, there'll be **spoilers** ahead.

And, a warning: though I'm not sure at this point if I'll work it in, there _might_ be some corporal punishment of children down the line here. _Might. _I've been trying really hard to get away from it, but there might be some.

NOTE: Lines in _italics_ are lines taken directly from the film.

* * *

_"Will we ever see you again?"_ Jeep inquired, hoping to stall the newly risen angel.

_"Have faith,"_ Michael replied in a way that the boy might have once considered cryptic, but taking an even glance at his decorated arms the testament began to make sense. And like that, Michael had swooped off, disappeared into the light of the sun, and was gone.

* * *

After hours of excruciatingly painful squirming, Mika emerged from beneath a thick slab of yellow-stuccoed wall and hauled herself into the sunlight, dragging her bloody left arm alongside her in the dirt. As her ripped body bent, loose, jarring screams of agony echoed over the desert flats and reverberated back along the cemetery of wrecked cars and the Bob's crumpled diner.

Something creaked dangerously. Biting her good fist, Mika rolled over on the dusty ground to see the green neon letters of 'Paradise Falls' begin to collide with the rubble beneath them, glass smashing and wires popping with electric fizzes and rumbles. Blood began to seep from her knuckles and make it way down her neck, seeping between the links of the silver chain that hung there.

The girl fell back against the earth and her breathing began to steady itself. Ocean eyes blinded by the rising sunlight, she shut them tight until the sky was awash in blue-grey clouds once more and the sand began to funnel around her. Her nose clogged, she gagged, and dragged herself to a sitting position. Before she could even entertain the idea her situation could not be worse, a painful burn seared down her left thigh and ripped at the muscles in her legbone. For a brief moment, everything was silent, and she opened her eyes as various memories of the night flooded back. The fear might have meant something had she retained the strength to flee it, however, she almost wished a possessed 'angel,' as Michael had called them, would come and drag her off to hell.

_Is it over_? She glanced 'round, squinting against the blazing heat. A layer of dust had already settled on the vehicles, some of which were still engine-warm, and hummed gently. Not much time had passed since the explosion, but Mika felt more alone than even when she first made the pit stop at Paradise Falls.

_"What'll it be, kid?" _

_Mika shook her head and simply took a seat in a booth at the edge of the diner, pulling the lapels of her rusty red jacket tighter around her shoulders and placing her arms upon the table. Her hands, clothed in faded, fingerless gloves, toyed with the fraying photograph of a woman, whose raven locks blew gently around her face as she stood melancholy in a wind stilled with time, partially obscuring the greenish glow of a diner-shop sign._

_She began to hum something tuneless and familiar.  
_

Mika withdrew the folded paper from the front pocket of her Levi's and held it up to block the sun. Unfolded, the ridges had cut into the print, leaving crisscrossed white lines in awkward X-formation over the woman's face. Mika allowed her arm to drop to the ground. In a series of congested minutes, or hours, she gradually began to embrace the concept of complete and utter lonesomeness, and the singularity was sickening.


	2. Paradise Hell

**Chapter 2 – **Paradise Hell

She'd dragged herself another few hundred feet – leaving a trail of bloody bile in her wake - and once more her body crumpled, rolling into the ditch alongside the poorly-paved road. The sun beat down harshly, silently shouting at the cloud that dared obscure its rays for a few mind-numbing moments. Mika flipped to lay upon her back, pressing her good elbow into the rocky dirt, setting her jaw against the pain of her broken arm. Taking a few seconds to bite it back, she exhaled heavily all the smog in her lungs and began to drift once more out of perfect consciousness.

_"Do you think she's alone?"_

_ "There ain't anybody outside," Jeep confirmed. _

_ "Maybe she's waiting on someone," Percy put in._

_ "Who meets up with somebody in the middle of nowhere?"_

_ "How'd she get up here? Can't be more than twelve or thirteen."_

_ Jeep's eyes brightened. "Well, there's a real spiffy 'cycle out by the pumps. One of them Falcones, classic red, and everything!"_

_ "Jeep, keep your voice down," Bob admonished quickly, taking a tentative glance outside the storeroom and down toward the booth with one child occupant. _

_ Mika was staring directly at him. _

On a suggestive notion, she craned her neck to the left. Lying not five feet away, the motorbike leaned haphazardly against the metal railing of the road. Its classic red finish soaked up the sunlight, the rugged front wheel spinning gently in the breeze. She groaned, sobs hitching in her throat, salty moisture barely making it past her cheekbones before drying up, drying up like everything else had done. Everything was gone; Paradise Falls and everyone in it had been blown to pieces and the angel was nothing more than a sick hallucination whose existence she was beginning to doubt. She was beginning to doubt the whole apocalypse, and yet, the world had never seemed so devoid of life, so linear, flat, and unforgiving.

----

Hours passed. Mika shifted her dead weight that burdening five feet to her left, thinking stupidly that she'd never take such short distances for granted again, and then wondering if it mattered at all to anyone that she'd made the immense journal to Paradise Falls in the first place, without so much as a questioning look.

_"You're going to live with your mother."_

_ Mika watched as Samuel tore through her junked bedroom, shoving things into a duffel. _

_ "Where is she?" the child ventured, leaning against the doorjamb._

_ "How the hell should I know? Here," he ripped a thin Polaroid from his pocket and shoved it into her open hands, stopping momentarily to watch her peculiar expression. In his own pained way, he let it go. _

_ On the back of the photo, in smudged pencil lead, an inscription: 'Paradise Falls, 1982.'_

The 1952 Guzzi was noticeably banged up, but the vital parts of its anatomy remained intact, despite its flight of a few hundred feet from the pumps to the road. The engine was cool, but the fuel tank was warm, and Mika's careful fingers found the most important wires connected amiably.

Using her right motor faculty, Mika pushed herself over the fringes of yucca grass and onto the burning pavement of the road. The clouds had given way to the sun once more. Crawling over to where her cycle leaned against the crooked railing, she reached for the burnished metal, its edges slicing lines into her palms. Finally, she was upright, balancing upon her good leg. She spent a few precarious moments testing its ability to carry weight, between glancing uneasily around the open range before her that spread in all directions.

She silently begged for strength, to no one in particular.

The cycle creaked as she hauled herself over its seat. The denim of her jeans slid easily over the dusty leather, her right hand instinctively curled around the worn handle, gently squeezing the brake. A horribly brief wash of pleasant emotion rose in her gut and she shook her head to the wind, the dusky mop of chestnut hair blurring the puerility of her features before the aftermath of horror struck them again.

A few minutes later found her in the same awkward position, struggling against every harrowing motion of her arm as she attempted to free herself of her toggled bomber jacket. It came free, sliding down the curved back of her slimly trimmed torso and onto the passenger seat behind her. Her bare arms relished the feel of the wind upon them. The thick, sticky blood began to harden and crack upon them. Slowly, as if fearing a single wrong look may ignite physical agony once more, Mika focused on her unfeeling left arm.

Beneath the dripping ooze, an edge of bone pierced the skin.

She shut her eyes.

_When the shooting had started, Mika was in the diner with the rest of the women, and the boy Jeep, and the dying Howard. Though nothing was making sense, nothing had ever made sense, and so she had become conditioned to such inconsistency. Still, terror was beating her core into a blood pulp between every heartthrob. _

_ Everything had gone to hell and back, and to hell again. The demonized angels picked them off one by one, and by the time Gabriel, as Michael had referred to the godlike apparition, had really begun to make his entrance, even Bob had hit the floor. _

_ It was really Bob that changed the course of things. If only he'd embraced darkness, the diner might not have been blown to pieces, Mika might have escaped with motor use of her left-side faculties, and she wouldn't have to speculate as to where Jeep, Audrey, Charlie, and the newborn baby were. _

_ The baby. That baby was the big fucking deal about everything. Future of mankind, that one baby boy. _

As much as the scenery and the pain protested otherwise, however, the present world didn't feel like she imagined Hell would feel, if there was a hell. And if there was a hell, if she was even wanted there. If she was wanted anywhere.


	3. Tourniquet

**Chapter 3 - Tourniquet**

Mika peeled her sweaty black t-shirt away from her chest. Beneath it, the gray wifebeater clung to her torso. Tentatively, and without looking, the kid traced a finger along the subtle indentations following the subtly-toned muscles of her abdomen and flat, pre-pubescent chest. Her heart throbbed beneath her open palm and she crushed her hand against the area, breathing heavily.

Using her teeth she chewed into the ebony shirt, feeling the seepage of sweat and other non-relishable bodily fluids flow through the spaces in her gums as she ripped it into thick ribbons. When she had a decently long one free, she tucked the shirt into one of the few saddle bags near her legs and proceeded to wrap it around her left arm, just above the protruding chunk of bone. Unable to tie a knot with only one free hand, she tugged it with her teeth as tightly as it would go. She reached into her back pocket, and withdrew an ivory buck knife. It erupted from its folded position with a shocking gleam of sound, and she held it up to the sun.

_"Are you sure you don't want anything?"_

_ Mika glanced up. Deftly, the photo in her hand disappeared into the confined pocket of her jacket. "No, I'm fine."_

_ Charlie bent a bit at the waist and squatted next to the free end of the booth so she could speak to the child eye-to-eye. Mika, for the umpteenth time in her short life, received that old, tired impression she was about to be spoken to like a four-year-old. _

_ "Where are your parents, sweetie?"_

_ The 'sweetie' hung her head and sighed heavily. "Coke."_

Mika remained positioned the way she was for a countable four or five minutes, frozen in that odd stance – one arm hanging limply, one raised to the sun, as if in some symbolic exaltation, gleaming dagger pointed to the sun, heated lord of the desert. The whole world was probably a desert, now.

The knife radiated heat, and she knew it was ready. Bringing it down to her ailing appendage, she gingerly touched it to the invisible line where the crook of her elbow met her bicep and drew it away. The skin seemed to shrink and a white line appeared. Gathering her resolve, Mika exhaled repeatedly until every stale breath had departed her lungs and her inhalations were in direct rhythm to her slowing heartbeat. Her jaw locked and pulled reflexively on the tourniquet, and she drove the tip of the blade into the fleshy skin.

Fighting back the dust swirling in and out of her salty eyes and the deluge of screams trying to clamber out of her esophagus, she drew it along about an inch, and repeated the action at the base of the bone. Her head grew light, but inside a cracked voice shouted and cursed her away from the dangerous unconscious, kept her focused. The tip of the knife struck sensitive muscle, which quivered and shied away from the instrument. She withdrew it, her grip slipping with blood streaming from the new wounds onto the handle and into her palm. All at once immune to the pain and more weakened by it than was ever measurable, she made the final slice between the two parallel incisions, connecting them with a single line in extended letter-H formation. Her bicep trembled against the shirt binding its veins, and the screams had bottled up to a growling in her throat, deep and long. Still, only a ancient whimper escaped her lips. Blood dripped from her limp fingers to the abyss of sand beneath the motorbike, immediately swallowed up by the shadowy wind blowing it over.

Mika plunged the knife into the tiny square of visible leather seat between her legs and let it stick there. Gingerly, she reached for the dead arm, and that first flap of flesh. Upon touching the skin her fingertips seemed to recoil instinctively, as though it were a foreign substance, disgusting and unknown, and excruciatingly agonizing. Squeezing her eyes shut, tears smearing her cheeks, she pushed the hesitant digits into the center incision and drew back the thin layer of skin.

It wanted to spring back into place, consistent with the elasticity property of skin and the human body in general. Mika held it there with her wrist crooked against it as she peeled back the other side and wrapped another shirt-strip around the flaps to hold them down and open. She placed the end in her mouth and tugged, once more fighting back screams.

Lying disjoint between layers of lumpy muscle, the bone was revealed. A single, jagged crack down its center had nearly broken it. The end piercing the skin remained attached only by a tiny segment of calcium and the linen wrappings of thin protective tissue. The goal wasn't to fix, but to to regain at least tolerably painful motor control of an important faculty.

Mika's resolve drained somewhat, yet she reached for the bone as easily as she had reached for the handle of her bike and wrapped her fingers around it. They squished into the muscle, causing her to clench her jaw once more at the sheer grotesqueness of the scene. Saliva soaked the fraying edges of the ribbons between her teeth. They began to slip.

In one swift motion, her right arm tensed and yanked the handle of bone up and pushed it into its intact half, snapping it into place.

The tourniquets began to unravel as a guttural scream ripped over the desert plains.


	4. Papercut

**Chapter 4 – Papercut**

** Author's Note: I apologize if some of the movie's events are out of order. I can't remember everything perfectly, especially when I'm trying to make it work for my own adaptation. Also, bear with me: I very rarely just jump into storylines that involve all the main characters from my chosen universe – I prefer to spend some time developing my own original protagonist first. **

Awakening once more, Mika found herself lost in a kind of nightmarish sleepstate. Numb, and somehow cold, she opened bleary, blood-crusted blue eyes toward the clouds. Other than the candid sliding of the sun across the atmosphere, she possessed no other concept of time, though little had passed. The incised arm remained limply attached, like some foreign dead thing, but upon gingerly flexing her bicep, Mika felt her fingers twitch. Rolling to her feet, she inhaled two lungfuls of mottled yellow sky and gripped the leather saddlebags. Working arms found the handles, and with a deft kick to the bike's rear the clutch was released.

The engine gurgled and lurched onto the pavement. Mika gunned the accelerator and sped onward down the road opposite the way she had come, the cycle weaving vicariously between the red-stripped gray pavement like a homing missile.

As the stupor beat through her consciousness, her thoughts drifted with the machine beneath her.

_**"If you won't do something, I will,"**__ Charlie demanded as Michael turned his back. Receiving no response, she grunted as one might do upon seeing something so bastardly and disgusting they felt it must be fixed. Outside, Audrey was trapped in a Chrysler with twenty demented angels hammering on the windows. Charlie reached for a gun, but suddenly, the archangel's hand was upon her arms, shoving it back. _

_**"Wait,"**__ he resigned, taking the weapon and taking up a larger automatic. __**"Open the door,"**__ he instructed Bob._

_ Mika stood clear – and somewhat forgotten – in the shadows by the window. The fluorescent light floated in through the blinds, casting pale green strips upon her still, terror-stricken face. She watched the last remnants of Kyle's mangled body decay in the shark-toothed mouths of the monsters outside and her sweaty hand tightened around the cold pistol tucked between her shirt and blue jeans. _

_ The door blasted open, shocking her out of reverie. Horrified, she watched as Michael stepped outside the relative non-danger of the pathetic little diner. _

The bike skidded on a segment of concrete caked over with bloody oil, screeching awfully before righting itself once more. Overhead, a cross-shaped shadow emerged momentarily from above a veil of clouds before dipping once more out of the sun.

Her memory reeled like acid-damaged film, whining on the wheel.

_Michael took them down like dominoes, rolling through the bullets in the machine gun before switching to the compact Taurus he'd been concealing and setting it to a dripping gas pump. _

_ Orange flames erupted from the nozzle and began licking away at the van and the flesh of the demons. Glass cracked under pressure. Something sinewy and screaming was pulled from the thick abyss of heat. Michael pushed Audrey toward the diner entrance and was overtaken before he could follow._

_ Inside, those still alive drifted toward the windows to watch as hell continued to unfold, Mika among them, tense fingers pushed between thin strips of aluminum blinds. They scanned the faces of the crazed monsters as if hoping to find a sane set of eyes among them, but nothing. _

_ Then, something familiar revealed itself in the crowd. Something ancient and timeless and nearly forgotten, but to the a lost child it resonated true. Standing still between a mass of them, one lost soul hovered somber and silent, like a beacon._

_ Within moments, Mika had rushed out the door and into the fray, without the thought ever crossing her mind that saving herself was _logical_, given the whole purpose they had been fighting in the first place, but as nothing had _ever_ been logical anyway... still, for all the unhesitant gusto of her brave [if foolhardy] actions, she was stilled by the disturbing sight. Her lungs seemed to seize and shudder, making her breathing heavy; her heart was a pendulum, gaining momentum with every terrible pump of adrenaline that flowed through her veins, dripped to the dusty ground, and fizzed at her feet. _

_ Michael emerged for a split-second, noticing her presence. _

_ "Get back inside!" he shouted. _

_ She wanted to. She wanted to run more than anything. Every fiber of her being bent in that direction as if magnetized. Michael was still fighting, the barrel of his gun shoved into the flaccid guts of angels with grotesquely elongated features and gaping mouths and eyes of pitch. Eyes of pitch focused on her, a much easier target for mutilation, a weaker mind for mutating. Her brain seemed to grow and distort. _

_ One of them broke from the heap as Michael sent them scattering, bounding in her direction._

_ The light of the beacon found her where she stood, about to be devoured. It's eyes glinted with a joyful malice. It smiled that devil-tooth smile. It's ebony hair crackled in the wind._

_ Something inside the little child grew resolute in a single instant, and in that single instant her fingers tingled and burned as though they'd been papercut one time for every blasphemous piece of hurt and pain and heartbreak she'd had ever had to endure and then peeled open to be rubbed into salt. Tears pricked at her eyelids. Fingers found the gun, and the gun found its mark. _

_ Gray matter splattered backward;the creature collapsed upon her, dead before it hit the ground. _

_ She shoved it off and gave a deafening yell of defiance. Come on, you bastards. Come on. _

The cycle gave a sinister gurgle and the jittery speedometer hand began to regress in counter-clockwise direction. The heaping, smoky remains of Paradise Falls had long faded out of sight. In some odd, nervous twitch, Mika clenched the right handle and the brakes locked, bringing the motorbike to a screeching halt.

_They were inside once more. The baby was coming, the baby was born. A nameless little bastard baby who was destined to save Mankind. Shifts began after the bloody delivery. Michael released Charlie to sleep and Audrey carried the baby to her mother, who was presently tied to a chair in the dining area. _

_ Mika leaned against the office doorjamb, listening as the woman blamed her teenage daughter for the apocalypse. _

_**Something much worse is coming**_**, **_Michael had said. Mika considered it oddly hypocritical of him to refrain from further explaining a notion so cryptic, given his deadly intent on protecting the remaining human race. All seven of them._

_ As he turned to leave the storeroom where Jeep was re-loading weapons, Michael caught the eerie sound of a tuneless hum. Rounding the corner, he saw the girl picking gingerly at a gash on her chest with the solemnly curious expression of a doomed child. He was both furious and moderately entranced. _


	5. Natural Disaster

**Chapter 5 – Natural Disaster **

_He was both furious and moderately entranced. Furious at her stupidity and blatantly foolish heroics, entranced with the introverted way she seemed to be dealing with the fucking __end of the world__. The last living child of a condemned race, standing there in a shallow hallway absorbing everything and deflecting nothing. _

_ His heart began to swell with that ancient pride, and pity, for the humans. His Commander, He had given up on them the way he'd given up on Noah's people and set them up for death. He had made them only to love them and loved them only to destroy them. If there was anything stupid about the forlorn ghost of a girl, it was only that she had never had the chance to love and be loved, and probably would not survive to realize either concept._

_ Michael placed a hand on her jacket as he floated past, the scabbing places between his shoulder blades sliding and cracking against each other. It left an imprint, and not just on her._

The wind began to pick up speed once more, blustering sand about the soles of her trainers. Mika pushed a gloved hand into her chest, probing her fingers around the loose threads hanging from the jagged rip in her sweaty undershirt until they found a long, crusty scab and the slick edges of a photograph. She caressed each gently, and pulled the latter into the fading light.

_Paradise Falls, 1982_.

The woman on the other side, hair windswept and coal black. Lips together in a silent, happy hum. A silent, happy, tuneless hum.

For years Mika had been holding onto a glimmer of something silent and happy, a tuneless hope she'd escape the cruelty of people and their mannerisms and all the ways most of the misery never seemed to affect her. It was only in the most recent forty-eight hours of her life that she'd really experienced fear or torment of the permanent variety, and even then, she'd abandoned all logic to defend that something she believed in.

Perhaps it was out of love for something that, for once, unconditionally loved her back. She felt that much, even if he didn't show it, or say it. She wouldn't go so far as to say she thought she could save Michael the instant she realized he might not be coming back through the diner door in one piece, only that it would get worse either way. She'd escaped the wrath of Gabriel, having been in the garage hiding when he arrived. Everything else was a mystery. Bob must have blown up the building. His body had lain racked over some side metal sheeting, visible as she pulled herself out of the dark rubble.

Everyone else was gone, or crushed. She wondered briefly if archangels _could_ die, or if he had simply lost his little war. Atop her bike, in her own little patch of nowhere, she imagined Lucifer's hand where Michael's had been.

_ "What are they?" she had finally asked him as he sat upon the roof keeping watch the second dusk, the barrel of his automatic rifle scanning the horizon for headlights. He did not turn, and she began to weave between the neon green letters, pausing to hover between D and I. _

_ "Angels."_

_ "Angels don't do this to people," she replied quietly, with a twinge of hesitancy and an undercurrent of pleading._

_ Michael dropped his weapon and craned his neck back to scrutinize the kid for a moment, before turning away again. "They obey their commander."_

_ "God?" she inquired. _

_ "He has... many names," Michael returned, raising the scope to his eyes to check his aim. _

_ "Does he hate us?"_

_ The gun fell once more as he turned. The girl was fidgeting once more with the gash cut diagonal across her chest, her fingers growing increasingly red with the bloody glaze. _

_ "You should have stayed inside."_

_ "What?"_

_ "Didn't you bandage that?"_

_ "It's fine," she assured, though her cracking tone betrayed the verity of her words. Her hand dropped to the waistband of her jeans and she hooked her thumbs into her pockets. _

_ "We're going to die, aren't we?"_

Michael hadn't responded to that, whether out of pity or insecurity Mika wasn't sure. In either outcome she could hear his voice in her head and almost wished he had nodded to the notion, or at least with some grand absolution explained the world was ending because it had to and not just on a whim.

Disaster had become such a natural part of evolution it seemed a miracle in itself that the human race had evenmade it _to_ the apocalypse - let alone been an integral part of its happening – and yet it was the apocalypse that had marked their existences. Whatever happy lives anyone once led, they had no scars to show for them.

Mika inhaled, stiff lungs protesting the heave of cool, evening air that flooded them. _Cool?_ Her chest cavity inflated with the chilly breath, making her shiver and turn her eyes to the heavens. Escaping her notice, clouds had blanketed the sky once more, pushing the burning sun into a dark cavity of space. A gust of wind howled in her face, frightening her into reflexive movement of the brake. Once more, the bike sped on down the road, the speedometer shaking violent past ninety, a hundred, a hundred-ten.

The machine seemed to hover above the ugly road, bouncing slightly like a sparrow chick escaping the tented confines of its mother's nest for the first time. The sky rumbled and crackled above Mika, though her eyes were surveying everything so quickly they weren't acutely analyzing anything at all.

Lightening struck a mountaintop miles ahead. Above the engine roar, she almost heard the avalanche as truck-sized spittles of rock and boulder erupted down the hills. Thunder shook the ground on which she hummed, and the dust began to funnel around her, blinding her to all but what was a few feet away. Another bolt of electricity and it cleared; the atmosphere was in total chaos. Driving through it was like witnessing the fast-forwarded version of a storm that should last for hours but was happening in minutes. Ahead, the road was dusky dark. Unable to see, and frightened to the core, Mika skidded to a stop, barely scraping her injured arm as she collided with the cement.

It was a familiar sight: dust traveling up the road toward her position with high speed, a plague of something sinister, and she doubted it would be as mild as the mauling locusts that nearly had them by their bleeding heads before.


	6. The Prophecy

**Chapter 6 – The Prophecy**

**Author's Note: I really didn't care for Chapter 5, but I was ready to move on. Also, you should know that I get ahead of myself with these Author's Notes [as in, though I've only just posted Chapter 6 I'm actually all the way through Chapter 9. This is to ensure I always have something for you... in addition to other reasons.] **

Like a scene from a bad horror film, she was the character left lying on the ground right in the face of utter death but oblivious to it. In a minute she would realize, like them, that it was too late, and try to escape to no avail. She would be swallowed by the cloud and lost forever.

And all the while the thought would be screaming through her head like a runaway train, _"it's not over. Not until you're gone. You were never meant to survive."_

In a minute she would realize, like them, that no one was ever _meant_ to survive.

But something happened to startle her out of reverie. A shadow, something cross-shaped and ominous, dipped down from the stormclouds and fluttered off toward the desert horizon, its body bent rather gesture-like. Not even by her own conscious will, Mika found herself pulled to her feet in midst of the fray, tornadoes furling around her, the stampede of darkness blasting toward her – closer every minute, the cold and the heat all wrapped up in her skin and making her body quiver, but suddenly be still.

Time seemed to slow. Nothing was real, nothing was there. The shadowy figure loomed in the distance.

Her heart stretched toward a name she feared to say.

_Michael._ Could it be?

Why? Why would he come back?  
A harrowing revelation struck her. Perhaps it wasn't Michael at all. Perhaps Michael was long gone.

Like a film reel, time found its bearings again and a bluster of wind blew the child off her feet. Her head's pounding silence shattered when cranium hit pavement and hands flew upwards. The bike skidded across the road with the force of the gust, sparks spraying over the yellow-stripped paint until it hit the ground as well, barely inches from Mika's battered head. Lost, and as though the past fleeting moment had not even existed, fear gripped Mika's insides once more and pulled her up. She hauled the bike to its tires and scrambled on, revved the engine to life and pitched forward, racing over the side of the road and onto the salty, sandy flat of the desert, away from the horizon and the shadow that pursued.

The grayness of its figure mingled with the shadows cast by clouds upon the ground, only to be further obscured by dust and the speed of the cycle as Mika shot across the flat plane of land. In instances it seemed to disappear, only to grow larger and larger until it enveloped everything in seeing distance and suddenly she was rushing into a shroud of blackness. Too late to react accordingly, she reeled back on the cycle as if tackled headfirst, her hands slipping from the brakes. Her spine collided with the ground and she tumbled a few feet, over piles of sharp-edged stones and weeds. The bike growled out a squeal, kept on speeding until it lost balance sans rider and slid once more into the vicious gravel. Their cries of pain were unanimous, but Mika possessed a kind of rigor borne from a life of psychological warfare: the kind of violence that is either endured or passed on to whatever loved ones one had left to remember it.

Mika had endured, and she wasn't about to let the fucking angel or demon or God or the prophetic end of the world take her without a fight. Face cold with sweat and tears, her one scream turned to a feral growl as she bit it back and stumbled to her feet, whipping the knife from her waistband with an audible _shink. _

_ Come on, you bastard. _She pivoted in circles, scanning the skies as they began to clear of the storm. A patch of pale yellow light slithered across the cracked earth to rest at her feet.

She spun and spun, but nothing. Frustration had long since bubbled into anger, and anger into malice, and malice into a overwhelming urge to impale something, to draw first blood. Beaten, battered, and barely breathing, she could have joyfully challenged God himself to duel it out on the planet he once showed so much compassion for, if only to prove to him the permanency of what he'd created.

Silence, only the sound of her dusky hair fluttering in the wind as her head whipped around. Finally, a man-shaped shadow appeared a few hundred yards away, his figure masked in that darkness that made all his features black and unrecognizable, but who else could it be but Gabriel, come back to finish his job.

"COME ON!" She screamed to the wind, the knife glistening furiously in the new light of the emerging sun.

The figure took a step forward and seemed to distort in width as two steel wings expanded and flexed dangerously.

There was no response, aside from the man's continuance in pacing forward slowly, his hands low at his sides.

The sliver of sunlight had made it past her, and was rapidly approaching the shadow, whose face was mere inches from it now. Its hands were empty of weapon, and as it moved along, the hair upon its head began to gleam perhaps even brighter than the sun.

Mika's bladed hand fell slowly to her side.

The angel stepped into the light.

-------------

"_Michael_?" the word was barely a tinge of breath coming out of her mouth.

Mika's head was swimming in a sea of immense relief and utter hatred, her body tensed, her fingers curled tighter around the knife and drew it back, ready.

Michael only nodded once, a look of dissatisfied skepticism upon his face as he surveyed her up and down, his expression tainted with something... tuneless and meaningless, but familiar. Quite familiar. Still, she didn't trust it.

She must have been something to see, however, standing there, all of four-foot-four, dressed like a mutt in a wifebeather and jeans, both of which were growing increasingly crimson as blood trickled freshly from her gaping arm. Her body was beaten, dirty, face scratched, eyes hemorrhaging and hyphemated. What wasn't red was brown, and what wasn't brown was twisted in anger and confusion.

But Mika couldn't hold onto it much longer. She hated him, hated him for leaving if he was obviously still alive – why hadn't he prevented anything from happening? Was everyone dead but her? Had he realized the futility of his one-man renegade mission against God himself and been persuaded to fulfill the final duty of ridding the planet of those never _meant _ to survive?

And yet, she couldn't hold on. If death was coming so swiftly, better it just happen, and better it be Michael than Gabriel to deliver it. She tore her eyes away and shut them tight a few moments, fingers clenching futilely around the hilt of the knife, rubbing bloodstains into the smooth ivory.

What seemed like entire minutes passed before either being spoke.

"_Bastard." _Mika whispered through clenched teeth, the word sticking in her throat like a dry hunk of glass. Michael seemed to twitch, and her ocean eyes met his sky ones once more, resolute and glinting. She hesitated, anticipating his first move, but when none was made she advanced. "JUST DO IT!" she shouted hoarsely.

"I'm not here to kill you."

"You never answered my question," she returned, voice low and steady.

_We're going to die, aren't we?_

Michael somehow was able to falter without losing any of his power or magnificence.

Mika continued, taking another small step forward, further closing the few yards left between them. "I was never meant to survive, it was the baby, the baby, the fucking baby," she spat. "This is all your fault!" she screamed with such pathos.

"You _did _survive," Michael stepped forward unexpectedly and Mika drew back, raising the blade. "I'm here to give a life back to you, not take it away."

""Don't patronize me! You let them die," she replied, her tone suddenly devoid of everything but somber pleading. Was everyone dead? Was the baby gone? It had to be over, it had to be. Nothing made sense.

"No," Michael replied evenly. "I fought only to give them a chance, and the baby is alive."

Time seemed to slow once more. The howls of the wind around the mountains kicked up dust motes between Mika's shaky legs. The soles of her trainers crunched against gravel as she had to step to regain balance. Yucca grass flattened and whispered noisily in the wind. _The baby is alive_.

"And Charlie?"

"And Jeep," the archangel's wings folded back into place.

"Why are you here?" she forced out.

"The human race has gotten its clean slate. There will be a rebirth of your dying breed, a renewal of life so magnificent you cannot even fathom its concept. God has received that which he needed, but events have already been set in motion, and with every minute you spend lost in this desert you come closer to fulfilling that original decree for your end on this planet."

Mika stood up a little straighter and took the words in. "I'm not supposed to be here," she whispered as she realized the truth of her lot. "I beat your prophecy. I wasn't supposed to live after the explosion."

"God has seen the wonders of this new cosmos he's creating, and he hopes to model it in the heavens, to make things new not only here, but in his Realm. A new era of angels. Why he did not smite you where you had lain after escaping the wreckage I do not know, but he is showing mercy by believing in you."

"A new era of angels," the child repeated.

"To begin with you."

Again, silence, minutes trickled by.

Mika lowered the knife and recovered from her fighting stance. Michael awaited a reply. They watched each other. Finally, Mika raised the knife, bringing it up past her cheek and threw it.

It landed at Michael's feet with a deadly reverberation, its shiny sound echoing tinnily, the blade delved into the sand like a carving knife through butter. The angel saw his reflection in it, but by the time he looked up, the girl was already walking away from him.


	7. Relentless

**Chapter 7 – Relentless**

** Author's Note: I've put together a playlist for this story, heavily inspired by a mix of Linkin Park's Reanimation and Snow Patrol's A Hundred Million Suns CDs. Expect a little Coldplay-inspired tones later.**

Mika had not made it two paces before Michael was before her once more, standing omnipotent a few yards away as though she'd never even turned around. He extended his hand, a peculiarly testing expression upon his face, eyebrows furrowed as if to invite her to try and evade him again. There was some gambling notion in the way she gazed back at him. The storm had picked up once more, wrapping its rainy tendrils around the mountains and trickling into the dust.

"Go away, Michael!" she shouted in frustration after pivoting a few more times, only to have him standing there.

"You will die out here," he returned.

"I'll find Charlie and Jeep," she countered, turning again, her resolute fury nearly obscuring her surprise to see nothing before her but blank desert canvas and darkening skies.

"You make the mistake of thinking that world is one you can be a part of. Things have changed," his voice reverberated in her ears as though they were head-to-head. She swung around, and there he was, inches from her position. All at once she felt very small and very lucky, to be standing there in such a glorious presence. Steel-blue armor plating adorned his torso and legs, gleaming in the brightening light of the sun as it clashed with the clouds. Wings flexed as entities of their own. His eyes swam with every emotion he'd ever felt and she felt it, too, washing away that perpetual agony inside her.

Agony he had no right to claim. It was hers, and how could he draw just swoop down from the streets of gold and say her life was over and take her away. She would rather die than give into something so maddening.

_You will die. _

Startled at the booming response, she glanced up, but Michael had said nothing. Yet the words lingered, bouncing around the walls of her skull until they degenerated into a hushed whisper. Her eyes found the menacing skies – they crackled in a joyous rapture of lightening.

"Like you said," she growled. "I was never meant to survive."

"Death will find you either path you choose. You can die here, or simply leave this world behind to forge a new one," the archangel spoke. Mika met his even, empathetic gaze with no energy to hate left in her own. "Very few people ever get the opportunity to decide their own fates."

"Don't patronize me, Michael," she retorted, though her compromising tone betrayed the ferocity of her order. "I'm the last goddamn person here."

He nodded.

Something swelled in Mika's chest, pushed at the walls of her ribcage, a powerful growth of sorrow and abandoned reprieve and everything she'd loved and lost in the whole world as she realized the utter verity of that terrible statement.

Dying alone sure didn't sound like the party it used to, especially for something as ignoble as being the _last goddamn person_ on the planet.

"I'm not like you," she began. "I'm not glorified or good or talented in any way. I've spent my whole life pretending to be what I'm not," she stumbled on the words, "why would... _God_ want me, how can I believe your world will be any less of a hell than this one?"

"You can't," Michael responded distantly. "Sometimes you just have to choose. Sometimes, there's no reason to follow a savior other than to escape a demon. That isn't wrong."

Mika faltered, and hung her head, shaking it slowly in disbelief. Her shoulders chilled as tiny pinpricks of lukewarm rain began to fall upon them and trickle into the rivers of blood upon her wracked body.

"The flood," Michael mused anxiously, craning his neck to the heavens.

"It's really over, isn't it?" Mika inquired.

"Yes."

She nodded. "What's going to happen?"

"He will make this Land clean, and life will start over at the beginning."

"Jeep and Charlie..." she trailed off.

"...are safe." he assured.

"How?"

"God works in mysterious ways. I could not do him justice by explaining them here." Michael ripped his eyes from the clouds and glanced down at the small, shivering child, her dusky mop quickly soaking in the rain. Standing straight she was barely a head above his waistline. "I must go," he wrenched the words out of his heart, leaving an awful burn there. "Will you come?"

Mika seemed to shrink and backed away slightly. The rain pounded the ground, a few inches of it already swarmed around her shins, quietly deafening. "I don't know what will happen."

Michael trailed her, stepping forward, bending down and extending his hand once more.

"Have faith."

The world was a torrent slowly swallowing itself in an ocean of new beginnings. The sky seemed to crack open like a hatching eggshell. As the sun was pulled into the universal purple roll of space, its light beamed against two dark figures locked together in ascension through the clouds and pealing thunder.


	8. Precious Stones

**Chapter 8 – Precious Stones**

**"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." - Tyler Durden, **_Fight Club_

**Author's Note: I recently saw the new Percy Jackson movie and it changed the way I thought about how Hell might look [if there is one], and I liked its concept design-wise, so I based my concept of Heaven around it. If you haven't seen the movie, you should – the visual image will really help you picture this. Just imagine that ugly place as being so bright and magnificent and green and alive [as opposed to red and dusky and hot and dead.]**

Mika awoke to the sound of fire crackling merrily. She stirred, arms pushing up to cover her eyes shut tight against the pull of consciousness in that way a child might fight off the dawn of a school day. She groaned away a deep breath of sleep and opened bleary blue eyes.

All she could see was a massive dome ceiling, obviously far above her but painted with so much detail she could make out every ornate design and beautifully inscribed verse upon its alabaster surface as though she were inches from it.

She could remember very clearly everything that had only recently occurred, but here time seemed a foreign concept. How long she'd been asleep was uncertain knowledge. Without giving her condition so much as second thought, she pulled herself into a sitting position and sunk a bit deeper into the plush poppy-colored sofa cushion beneath her. An elegantly stitched gold duvet slipped from her legs and landed with a soft whisper upon the tiled floor. Mika suddenly realized getting up had been so effortless, and glanced down at her injured arm.

It was perfect. The skin was smooth and unmarred, no traces of blood or sand remained to taint it, no bone protruding. Ginger hands found her hair soft and clean, and wafting some foreign scent, like lovely honeysuckle. Fingers prodded her cheekbones and still no imperfections, traced down her neck and touched the silky cotton collar of an ivory-colored tunic seemingly plain, but as her hands slid down her chest she felt the stitching weave beneath them in glorious patterns, precious gems of every hue in beautiful overlay. She rose, feeling strong, stronger after her breath hitched in her throat and escaped in a final cough. Lowering her bare feet to the floor she hesitated, expecting the tiles to be chill, but they radiated a lovely warmth. She paced slowly across them, trailing her fingers along the edge of the chaise and stepping out of the small nook into the rest of the room.

It was a vast space, more a wide hall than a singular _room_. The painted designs of the ceiling dripped perfectly into the weave of stones creating the walls. Thick columns, rusty brown in hue, stood proudly around the outer edge of the ring, and between them upon the firelit floor the room was filled with more furniture and trinkets and oddments than Mika had ever seen in any one place. It seemed to her some kind of antique store, without the dust or random helter-skelter placement of things, yet there was seemingly no specific organization to the room. Still, somehow, it was as though everything had a purpose and a deliberation about it.

She treaded softly, weaving between the eccentric pieces, stumbling over the legs of mahogany desks adorned with huge sheaves of paper, crinkled and rolled into loosening scrolls, yellowing with age and use. Sculptures, statues of creatures she'd never seen in encyclopedias and people with a magical twist in their expressions, trinkets of all shapes and sizes, some stationary, others invisibly mechanized to move and chatter and operate like little organisms.

Something skittered across the floor at her feet, making the girl jump and pull at the collar of her tunic, a breath hitching in her throat. Beneath a chair leg, it glinted in the light of the massive candlelit chandelier directly above. Slowly, curiously, Mika lowered herself to the floor and peered beneath the low wingback. Between two edges of a cracked tile, a small object laid upon its side. Tentatively, she reached for it, fingers twitching as they closed around the cool thing and brought it into the light.

A tiny bear, no larger than half her palm, carved from wood and otherwise plain save for two gems representing the eyes, which glowed teal in the flickering light. A thin silver chain hung from its back. The thing seemed quite immobile, and Mika shook her head like a dog waking from a rabid dream.

Looking up, she found herself gazing directly at Michael, who was standing across from her a few feet away. She gasped slightly then cursed the sound in embarrassed shame, clutching momentarily at her heart once more before letting her hand drop in a sigh. Shooting him a look of pure frustration she clenched the tiny object in her hand behind her back and gazed blankly at the angel. He had removed his thick, blue steel armor and stood clad in an ominous ebony outfit, a suit of sorts that appeared comfortable, but battle-ready. Mika tried to peer around, get a glimpse of his magnificent wings, but they weren't there, and for a fleeting moment she wondered if she'd dreamed it all.

"Where am I?" she inquired quietly.

"I believe the simple term for it is 'Heaven.'"

Mika glanced around, as if expecting something in the room to change as the word was mentioned. "And if I don't believe in _Heaven_," she retorted weakly.

"It does not matter what you believe," Michael responded dispassionately. "Though it has always been of some fascination to me how humans continuously doubt the truth when it is right in front of their faces. I do not blame you for your insecurity."

Mika simply stared. "You aren't kidding," she whispered, almost pleadingly.

Michael cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, almost _mockingly_, and shook his head in the negative.

"Okay, so this is Heaven, fine. Why am _I _here?" she entreated, a hint of sarcasm snuggling into her tone.

"You aren't dead, if that's what you're asking."

"It isn't," she replied after a moment's hesitation at the humbling nature of Michael's voice upon making that statement.

He nodded once more. "Come with me."


	9. Burning in the Sun

**Chapter 9 – Burning in the Sun**

The angel led Mika through a labyrinth of hallways and corridors, none of which could be labeled nondescript. The stone walls were slathered with painted images, some delicate and bright, others of horrible scenes, all beautiful. Together they seemed to weave into little stories, which formed epic tales of triumph, defeat, love, hate, chill, warmth, life, and death. Mika's first impression of 'Heaven' wasn't at all like they told it in churches. Where were the pearly gates, the golden floors? They pressed onward past open windows and the sky outside was black as pitch.

What if Michael had fooled her, had lied? What if she _was_ dead, and he was here to present her to the devil?

The devil... or if he hadn't lied, then he could only be leading her to one thing, the good equivalent of the devil.

Suddenly, they were in a cavernous Hall with ceilings as high as some skyscrapers. Michael stopped before a massive set of double doors, hand-carved in smooth oak. Mika did not avoid colliding with the back of him, though he seemed not to notice.

She glanced around, taking it all in. For a space so vast and grand, there was very little in it. At the farthest point along the back wall, another set of doors stood. Between her and them the only breathing creatures were she and Michael, and although that wasn't terribly comforting, it didn't pain her much either.

Mika hadn't much time to indulge before Michael's arm crept across her shoulder and pulled her along toward the doors. When she tried to shake him off with a violent twitch of the appendage he halted swiftly and snatched her collar, pulling her around to face him. For a moment she was shocked at his audacity, but the as the icy glint in his eyes sharpened a bit before melting again, she swallowed. No words were spoken, but some form of understand was transferred, because he let her go and they pressed on.

"Where are we going?" Mika whispered as she trudged after him, suddenly wishing she had shoes on.

"If you desire understanding there is something you must understand," Michael began as though he hadn't heard her, yet he paused and seemed to falter, as the capacity of his message was either too great a burden or too difficult to explain. But before he could continue they reached the high wooden doors, which up close she realized were not wooden at all, but of some carnelian stone. Minute flecks of jasper and citrine created the subtlest and most ornate of patterns within the inlay, but the doors were no marvel compared to the view outside them.

In the same way an eager author struggles to depict the many wonderful fantasies that unravel in his or her busy head, Mika's head could not take in the sight of Heaven all at once. A curtain of white light poured onto the cool floors and lit up the cavernous hall as though the sun itself was trying to force its way in, making her ears ring and swell with the rapture outside: not the choir of a thousand voices joyously praising a god of cliché church tunes, but the sounds of the world as it rushed by in slow motion. Once more, Mika thought she was awakening out of a dream, back into an Earth pre-apocalypse where nothing horrible had ever happened and there was a road that would take her back to the city to the dingy flat she and Samuel shared, but as her eyes adjusted, everything was all at once different. The same, but different. Warm melodies of magnificent birds touched the thick sky, not blue, but every shade of blue and then some. Trees swayed in the breeze, leaves turning colors and sighing contently. Suddenly, the child's ocean eyes began to water and burn, as human eyes do when they gaze too longingly upon the yellow sun. She snapped them shut, recoiling, but the beautiful images pounded in her head and she pried them open once more only to tighten them again and press her palms to her salty face.

Michael only looked expectant of such a reaction and was almost amused when she tried a third time to open her eyes, only to recoil with a minor outburst of discomfort before closing them again.

"What's going on?" She demanded, stamping her foot upon the feathery grass in puerile frustration.

"The first thing you must understand is the reason there is no 'Heaven-on-Earth,' as its people sometimes like to imagine. They are separate because it is not within a human's psychological capacity to comprehend it beyond believing it exists."

"What are you talking about?" she retorted desperately, rubbing furiously at her eye sockets. "I'm twelve years old! Speak English!"

Blindly Mika felt her body tugged along by Michael's grip upon her arm, then lifted by two grips beneath her arms, then placed back upon the ground, solid this time. Afraid to open her eyes for another optical beating, she kept them shut, but as she squeezed them tighter there was a rushing sound of something directly overhead and the world around went silent, the orange glow pressing into her eyelids blackening with lack of light.

Tentatively, she lifted an eyelid, and this time the watery orb didn't burn. Michael was hunched before her, his arms resting on one leg as he knelt. She glanced up. Inches above her head were silvery wings, enveloping her in a tight orbish bubble of feathers that shifted gently with each passing wind and dimmed the rays of glorious light, shutting out all sound completely, save the low humming of their own voices.

"In plain _English_, your body and mind are not built for this place, not built to indulge such wonders."

"So I can't look at it?"

"Not yet. Your eyes will adjust, your head will orient itself to its surroundings," he answered. "To what extent I couldn't attest, but I find in humans a remarkable capacity for resilience, and you have proven yourself one of the more durable of your kind."

Mika, who had not been fully attentive until that phrase was uttered, met the archangel's malleable gaze. Her mouth, which had been open and ready to come back at him with more questions, slowly closed into a thin, sad line.

"I thought Earth was modeled after Heaven."

"Indeed, but only in ideal. Initially, God had designed no _heaven_ beyond his most amazing creation, his Earth. It was not until sin entered that world that he abandoned it in body to reside in a completely perfect place and watch its destruction unfold along with a beautiful glory that gave him hope for its end, when it is written that every soul will be brought before him."

"For being his right-hand guy, you sure make him sound like a bastard," she commented blithely, reaching up to brush her thin fingers along a tendril of downy steel feathers, making the wing twitch a bit with the unexpectedly chill touch of human skin. Michael shut his eyes, first out of annoyance, but as his appendages stilled once more a relaxing shudder crept down his spine and he opened them once more.

"We must continue," he commanded lightly.

"To where? If you expect me to let you pull me around like a blind person you can shove that notion right up your-"

Michael clamped a hand over the child's mouth and suppressed a miffed growl. _She sits still only long enough to be mellow for ONE moment and then right back to spiteful and sarcastic. _"So pessimistic," he sighed. "Before you proceed do know that there are beings here who will not be so tolerant of your many _wonderful_ moods or that mouth of yours, and should you continue behaving like an insolent brat I will treat you like one. Do we have an understanding?"

Mika nodded, but inside she was seething.


	10. Arrival

**Chapter 10 – Arrival**

_Mika nodded, but inside she was seething._

Michael removed his hand, but when Mika tried to open her eyes once more, he ordered her keep them shut and muttered something inaudible about his fascination with the persistent idiocy of human beings despite all their lovable glory, to continue trying things they know will only pain them. Or maybe that was just this human.

"How am I supposed to-"

"Always concerned about something, aren't you?" Michael cut her off. "Just trust me."

Mika fidgeted, not used to the darkness of closed eyes and wings overhead. She heard Michael's hands rustling around something, and tried not to withdraw when he tied the blindfold around her head. The soft, black fabric shut out all light; not even the sun penetrated – and yet, somehow, his voice seemed to envelop her and pull her along in his wake as though she could see everything and far beyond as clear as day.

As they drifted across the cobblestone courtyard and through the Gate to the City's entrance, they passed not a soul, save those of a flock of blackbirds, which erupted from tree to sky in scattered formation as they paced beneath.

Not far into the journey, Mika's parade of questions began again.

"So when people die do they get wings? Where were your wings when we were in that room? What _was_ that room?" She paused, but before Michael could get a word in, "why am I wearing these?" Her fingers blindly caressed the beading of her tunic and the plain canvas of her shorts.

"The second thing you must understand is that you are not unlike every other human being," the archangel began, ignoring her previous queries and unraveling the blindfold from her head. Mika flinched, but her eyes fluttered open and scanned the atmosphere. They were standing beneath an enormous tree whose trunk was curved and wide and connected to many thick roots that spread out over the modest grassy hill on which it rested. Without at all questioning how the laws of physics could bend so far as to have led her from one place to another or why she was suddenly able to see painlessly, Mika glanced up in awe of the sun as it dappled through the jade leaves and the sheer vastness of the leaves as they were continuously occupied and vacated by migrant flocks of tiny sparrows and bright, technicolor lovebirds.

"Where _are _we?" Bare feet stepped forward into the plush soil at the base of the tree as her hands found its bark and pressed firmly. It was very warm.

"Z_oës__._" Michael replied.

"Is that some kind of Heaven-language?" Mika inquired, though spiting the facetiousness of the question her eyes seemed genuinely interested. The archangel shook his head, pacing up behind her and taking her arms in his hands, directing her touches to a spot just above a root. "Here," he murmured, and her fingers felt indentations, letters, a word carved into the wood.

ζωής

"What is it?"

"Z_oës__. _It is a name," he responded. "Everything in Heaven has a name."

"Why?" Mika straightened her back and faced him. "Trees aren't alive. They don't know the difference."

"No, _you _don't know the difference, nor do you care," he bent down, analyzing her confused expression. "Human beings, by nature, become extremely attached to the things they care about. They give them names. Your name is the first gift you ever received as a human, but God gave you life. Life is the first gift you ever received as a _being. _You are the last of your kind and a contradiction in yourself. Trees are alive as much as anything, but on Earth they mean little, they are taken for granted."

Mika seemed lost but unwilling to admit it, so she simply shook her head in wonder.

"What _does_ it mean, then?" she whispered, turning back to the trunk and brushing it once more with nimble fingers.

"It is a word from an ancient Greek language that means 'life,' here in the context being the Tree of Life," Michael stood. "But these names are uniquely defined by each new mouth that speaks them, in the same way that one road may lead two individuals in completely opposite directions."

There was a moment of silence. "You don't make sense," Mika finally replied.

"Actually, here, it's you that doesn't make sense," he responded.

Mika didn't smile. "Are you going to be like this until we get where we're going?"

The angel seemed about to respond when his eyes found the gaze of another man clambering up the hill.

"No. We've arrived."


End file.
